Tuesday, September 11, 2007

A Mother Takes On MIT

On April 12, Sue Kayton learned that her son, a 22-year-old senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had gone missing. Four days later, a student at Virginia Tech killed 32 people on that campus.

The following week, while Virginia Tech was being criticized for withholding information about the gunman due to its privacy policy, MIT's own privacy policy was leading it to reject Ms. Kayton's requests for information she believed would help her find her son. The administration refused to allow Ms. Kayton access to her son's dorm room or to his computer files. It demanded a subpoena even after her son was listed in a national missing persons database.

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